


To Build a Home

by caandleknight



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 (TV) RPF, The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Fix-It, Guilt/regret, Romance, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, healing and talking, s7, s7 fix-it fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:53:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26967025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caandleknight/pseuds/caandleknight
Summary: “You’re alive,” Clarke gasps, pinching the grass between her clenching fingers. Bellamy stares at her, saying nothing.“So you’ve stopped hiding from her, then,” Octavia fills the silence, standing beside them. He rises, and he leaves them both, as though they never mattered to him. He leaves them both, (but he rejected transcendence. Quite the oxymoron.)She shot him in the leg, not the heart, and he lived: now she has to deal with that...Bellarke. Bellamy/Clarke. S7 Fix-it fic
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 22
Kudos: 117





	To Build a Home

_October 12, 2020_

_To Build a Home_ (by _The Cinematic Orchestra_ )

_.._

_"And now, it's time to leave, and turn to dust."_

..

She held a gun many times in her life: the first time, a man of many sins taught her how to shoot, how to pull the trigger and end a life. This new skill of hers endangered and saved her and her people many times over.

Sometimes, both at once.

Clarke holds a gun now in shaking hands, and she has it pointed at a man she can scarcely recognize. He still has many sins, and now, she does too.

“You’re not gonna shoot me, Clarke,” he whispers, hands up.

The green glows behind her, and she is rapidly becoming overwhelmed. What’s one more betrayal? Clarke already knows he thinks she’s a monster. His eyes are broken on her, tired, reflecting how she feels. _Inevitably. Pain._

 _Click_. She cocks the pistol.

Her eyes blur, and she sees him pick up the book, and she she hears: “I’m sorry.”

 _You’re forgiven,_ is her heart's first response.

But then, he is handing over a sketchbook. Bang. It echoes—no, rattles—in her skull as he cries out in pain. Blood spews from a hole in his thigh. Bellamy collapses to his knees, pushing a desperate palm on his leg. (She shot him.)

_Because you know he thinks you’re a monster who’ll abandon anyone._

His eyes drift up, tears falling down his cheeks. Here is her chance: run, grab the book, escape, and leave him behind, but she doesn’t. She is frozen. Every terrible thing she ever did catches up to her in the hollowness after the gunshot, and there is no one to hug, no one offering to share her burden. She never let him carry their weight, no matter how much he begged.

She stares at him as he tries to push to his feet.

(This is what Monty was talking about when he said, “ _he couldn’t lose you._ ” This is what it must’ve looked like.)

Clarke lost herself when she was left behind on earth, but she found Madi, and that’s who she needs to protect. She lost Bellamy over a century ago. This is what she tells herself. She didn’t shoot Bellamy who combed the hair from her face, or kissed the hollow of her neck as he crushed her in his arms. This Bellamy was not the heart, (and she has long forgotten how to use her head.)

Clarke turns into the Anomaly, abandoning him.

..

It’s Lexa.

Of course it is; Clarke loved Lexa, and just like that time Josephine took over her body, she can’t bear to face him after what’s she’s done.

So she hugs Lexa, because she loves Lexa, and she wishes she was still here.

..

.

.

After everyone greets her, she sits.

For the first time since solitary confinement, she does absolutely nothing. Even in Praimfaya, she had a goal: five years until Bellamy came home, and then, when he didn’t, it was Madi.

Save _her_ , protect _her_.

Madi, her reason, is gone now. There is nowhere to be. Everything she had done up to this point is crashing down on her.

Clarke takes a breath, and then another.

She is on the beach, butt in the damp earth, because it's over. Her humanity is in shambles. Her identity too. (She _shot_ Bellamy.)

He bled out, alone, because of her.

Echo and Octavia were angry with her, before they rejected transcendence, so angry, “ _He loved you,_ ” Octavia said to her when they were all still alive, “ _and he loved me, and he loved Echo.”_ She looked at Clarke. “ _You abandoned him.”_

Bellamy bled out, thinking she didn’t care, without knowing she loved him.

Out of everyone, Murphy is the one to sit next to her. Who knew? When she first met the boy, he was a tool, all too similar to Bellamy. Who knew, out of the hundred-and-one people thrown out like trash: only Octavia, Murphy, Miller and Clarke would be left.

Ninety-seven names. She traces them into the damp, grainy sand.

“It’s like the City of Light, but there’s a choice.” She gasps a laugh. After all she did to keep them from that city, they are in a utopia of never changing anyway. “We chose to be here though,” he says, “all of us,” regardless of who you’ve shot, or who you’ve killed.

“I wish we all had the choice.” Even the dead. The water banks her feet, foamy and fluffy.

Her father, Wells, Charlotte, Finn, Lincoln, Jasper, Monty, Harper, Roan, Luna, her mother, Kane, Jaha, Lexa. She wishes they could’ve had the choice, even if they turned it down.

 _Bellamy_ —but she stole that choice from him.

She stole his transcendence. _Funny_ , she thinks as tears well up in her eyes, that he was the one who preached it. He believed in it, and regardless of how he went about it, he wanted them all to transcend. He was _right_. He wanted to survive this last, stupid, redundant war. She shot him for it, to save a girl who isn’t even here anymore.

The tears fall from her face, and Murphy says nothing: _oh so very funny._ When they slip into the sand, she can’t tell the difference between her tears and the lake water.

“I’m proud of you, Clarke,” Murphy whispers, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She falls into him, squishing her eyes closed so harshly; he hesitates. It reminds her of the first time she held Bellamy.

If she sobs loud enough, she won’t be able to tell the embraces apart.

(or so she hopes.)

..

She thinks the world is cruel.

First, after killing him, she saw Finn: he haunted her, but then even Lexa haunted her. Bellamy was never hers to lose, so what is he doing there?

On the ground, against a tree.

It’s Bellamy as she knew him too, because not even transcendence's denial has the mercy to let her go a second without guilt. His black hair is in wild curls, and a stern frown is etched into his face. His Ark-standard jacket is as dirty as she remembers.

The freckles, the scar above his lip, and the eternal weight that sits in his shoulders, it’s all there.

With her tent right next to him, she can almost pretend like the dropship is just behind her. She can pretend she just gave him forgiveness, and are somewhere between friends.

She can pretend.

His focus is in his crisscrossed lap, where he holds a familiar hatchet, whittling away aggressively at a stick. “Look who was right,” he says, brushing wood chips off his cargo pants.

Clarke stares at him. “What do you want?”

His eyes shoot up to hers, piercing, and for the first time ever, she flinches under his gaze.

“Bellamy!” Octavia calls.

Clarke nearly faints: she falls to her knees. Octavia jogs through the trees, stopping when she sees her. “So you’ve stopped hiding from her," she says.

He’s _real_.

“You’re alive,” Clarke gasps, pinching grass in her clenching fingers.

He stares at her, saying nothing.

He stands, walking between Clarke and Octavia. Like they never mattered to him; her eyes begin to blur. He is gone. He is alive.

Octavia settles next to her, pulling her into a half-hug. “He’s still mad at me too.”

“You didn’t shoot him.”

“I sent him to the pits,” she says; Clarke opens her mouth, “...and you left him there to die. I know, I know.”

She has known Octavia for so long, but it still feels like she’s never had a chance to truly know her.

Clarke doesn’t even know herself anymore.

..

The first week after the rejection of transcendence, they have a campfire.

Jordan cooks up an old recipe and Hope’s first sip of alcohol has them all laughing. Jordan especially. Levitt is even worse. Clarke doesn’t laugh.

She thinks she might’ve forgotten how.

All she can think about is how all these people turned down the perfect afterlife: for a mass murderer.

For her.

The hooch stings her gums but she has zoned out the celebration, staring at the crackling fire. It sparks and a log burns through to white ashes. They sing an old Ark hymn. Clarke does not participate, but the rumble of Jackson and Miller’s voices to her left mix nicely with Bellamy’s across the flame.

Levitt holds Octavia to his chest as they sway. Jordan and Hope are missing. Jackson has his arm around Miller.

Clarke doesn’t know if she was expected Bellamy to be cuddling with Echo like that fire weeks ago, but he isn’t.

Echo is next to Raven and Hope.

Bellamy is laughing with Murphy over how shitty their voices are. He looks so happy, glowing in the firelight. A drunken haze is in his eyes. He used to be so good at making her laugh when the world was crumbling. His eyes meet hers over the fire, and he looks away, laughing with Murphy.

They all chose to stay here, to keep her company. (He chose to stay, turned down transcendence.)

..

It’s not fair she knows.

It’s not fair to want to kill herself when all these people stayed because of her, but she doesn’t exactly know how to bring it up.

_I’d like to kill myself._

They’re an inconvenience, these thoughts. Her existence is about baring things, so her people don’t have to. She shouldn’t be thrusting her problems on them.

She has been this way for a very long time, she notes, on the verge of suicide.

Holding a gun to her head: it’s a common occurrence.

Oh, she is sick; trauma is stinging the roots of her hair. Sometimes, she smells the copper of blood that isn't hers. She flashes to countless hours trying to keep people alive, and the even more uncountable number of people she’s murdered.

Now that there’s nothing to do, it amplifies to unprecedented levels.

No one needs her anymore. It was the hundred, and then Madi. (Bellamy screamed, “ _I need you._ ”)

..

One morning, Clarke can’t pull herself out of bed. She knows she has to: she knows. This isn’t fair to them. She has to be happy, so they can be happy.

Clarke was afraid of this, after she committed her first genocide.

Seeing their faces every day, it reminds her of everything she’d done to get them here, to peace: and then they stayed behind, with her, rendering it all moot.

 _I don’t want to be alone._ But maybe she deserves to be.

It finally catches up to her once she finished surviving, all that killing. _How dare she live?_

There is a knock on her tent post. “Clarke?” _Bellamy_. Why him? Why does he have to see her like this?

She doesn’t answer.

“Clarke!” _Fwoosh_. He throws the door flap out of his way.

She pulls the fur over her head, revealing her legs to the cool air. It tingles her toes.

“You doing alright?” His tone is softer than she is expecting.

She rolls over, eyes wetter than she remembered. She pulls the fur down to her nose. “What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you’re okay.” She knows her eyes widen, and she sees him flinch. “You don’t have to look so shocked.”

“I-“ _I just thought you hated me,_ that’s all.

“Clarke,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pocket, “the sun’s going down. You need to get out of bed.” Finally, her shackles unlock. She sits up. “Answer my question.”

“I’m fine.”

His shoulders tense. “Please don’t lie to me.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I’ve been worrying about you since I taught you to shoot. Get your ass outta bed.” (He thinks about it too. How she held that rifle, and it shocks her.)

“No.”

She throws herself back down, like a child. He grabs the fur, but doesn’t really pull. She grits her teeth.

"Clarke."

“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you transcend?” she asks, seething. A cocoon forms. The force on her blankets drops off nearly instantly. One second of hesitance passes, and then two.

“I had people I cared about here.”

Clarke doesn't hesitate at all. "I thought that was selfish love.”

“Cadogan was full of shit.” Transcendence was real; Bill Cadogan was no shepherd. She rolls over. “You want something to do?” he asks, “Help me with my home, tomorrow, sunrise.”

She looks up at him, doubt in her eyes.

“You were never an early riser." Clarke remembers the days of the dropship, when the skies were pink with early morning. Bellamy wouldn’t roll out of bed until she pestered him enough to leave a headache.

Usually, a girl rolled out with him.

Her chest tightened then, a minuscule, insecure amount. It was a petty crush, and she wonders how it all could've gone so wrong, so fast.

..

.

.

_to be continued._

**Author's Note:**

> Might continue this, idk. I have ideas.
> 
> Send prompts that would fit in here and I’ll try :))


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